Warehouse Wisdom. Weekly. 09/26/2025

🚚 Happy Friday.

This week’s supply chain stories range from creative tariff dodges to billion-dollar losses. Retailers are bending the rules, carriers are swallowing penalties, and robots are finally proving they can handle chaos at scale.

Let’s dig in.

Global Logistics

Retailers hack tariffs while carriers eat the cost

Retailers are quietly weaponizing a B2B2C scheme to slash duty bills—and carriers are left holding the bag.

The tactic is simple: consumer orders are routed through a wholesale middleman, with the declared “wholesale” price submitted to customs instead of the retail tag. That can cut duty burdens by 30–60%. (If a $30 dress is declared at $15 wholesale, the duty shrinks accordingly.)

But not everyone sees this as clever. CargoTrans co-CEO Nunzio De Filippis calls it “taking aspirin for a broken leg.”

Maersk has also made headlines, announcing it will not levy surcharges tied to new U.S. port fees on China-linked vessels that take effect in October. It’s a gamble—absorbing fees to keep customers happy while rivals consider reflagging vessels to avoid costs.

Meanwhile, demand is softening. August truckload volumes dropped 8% for dry van and 6% for reefer and flatbed, as the July tariff-driven import surge fizzled. Retailers who stocked early are now sitting on inventory, while others prepare to pass tariff-related cost increases directly to consumers.

Small Parcel Freight

UPS trims staff, FedEx takes tariff hit

UPS is leaning into drastic cost cuts: the company is offering voluntary buyouts to drivers and operations managers. The package pays $1,800 per year of service, with a floor around $10,000—likely appealing mostly to longer-tenured employees.

It’s not UPS’s first cut-back: in 2024 it closed facilities and trimmed management roles ahead of demand slackening. The Teamsters union is pushing back hard, calling the move a violation of contract obligations.

On the flip side, FedEx projects a $1B hit from disrupted trade lanes and surging customs costs. The policy swings between China and the U.S. have squeezed parcel flows and pushed its financial outlook into risk mode.

Adding another layer: postal services are slowly creeping back into U.S. shipments. Deutsche Post and Australia Post are among the first postal operators to restart parcel delivery to the U.S. after duty-exemption rules changed.

Logistics Vitals

Container imports crater as America loses relevance

US container imports are heading for an historic September collapse as Trump's trade war transforms America from global trade engine into economic sideshow. August volumes barely stayed positive at 0.1% year-over-year growth despite July's frontloading surge, while September bookings from China crashed 26% compared to last year. Analyst John McCown warns this isn't cyclical—it's America becoming less relevant in global trade.

• China's dominance shrinks from historic 40% peak to 29.3% of total US container volume as diversification accelerates

• Global trade diverges sharply as Far East container exports surge 6.3% year-over-year while US lanes crater

• Port of LA expects 10% September decline with McCown predicting double-digit drops across major container gateways

• Westbound backhaul collapses 18% despite tariff pause as retaliatory measures damage two-way trade flows

• Import growth historically outpaces GDP by 2-3x ratios, making current reversal unprecedented outside financial crises

• Frontloading exhaustion hits peak season as anxious shippers already moved holiday inventory during July surge

Warehouse Tech

Autonomous trucks scale, warehouse robots deliver

Autonomy is moving from pilot to backbone. Gatik is expanding its autonomous truck deployment with Loblaw, setting up to run 50 driverless vehicles across its Ontario network—one of North America’s boldest middle-mile bets yet.

In the warehouse, DSV and Locus Robotics are proving that robots can scale under real pressure. Their partnership uses the LocusONE system in a robots-as-a-service model, enabling burst capacity during peaks without ripping up infrastructure. Human operators learn to work alongside the bots instead of competing with them.

Outcomes are already showing: throughput is rising, workflow friction is dropping, and the system is replicable across facilities without major redesign.

Green Logistics

AI dreams and real-world green ops

AI is being billed as climate’s silver bullet, but the real change is happening in the back rooms.

Amazon’s sustainability leaders say AI could become climate’s most powerful tool, using massive data models to analyze emissions, energy flows, and lifecycle impact. But practicality is the rub: Amazon processed 15 billion carbon data points in 2024 just to feed its AI engine.

Meanwhile, real gains are coming from the less glamorous side of logistics. In Dallas, T-Mobile’s reverse logistics hub is pushing 1 million used devices monthly through reuse cycles, reaching a 97% reuse rate. That’s mining avoided, e-waste reduced, and real impact.

On the energy front, Mars signed one of its largest ever clean energy contracts with Enel, covering full output from three Texas solar plants (1.8 TWh/year) to power not just factories, but farms, trucks, and supplier networks. The move could cut 700,000 tonnes of CO₂ annually — roughly 10% of Mars’s total footprint.

Warehouse Quick Deliveries

Nearshoring hubs emerge as automation hesitation costs share

• Colliers identifies top 10 emerging U.S. industrial markets led by Charleston, Savannah, and Phoenix as nearshoring and advanced manufacturing reshape distribution networks

• ST Logistics targets €30M revenue disrupting Nordic warehouse automation by deploying Geek+ AMR systems in three weeks versus traditional 12-18 month implementations

• For SMBs, supply chain experts declaring "on-time delivery" an outdated KPI means shifting to resilience metrics that actually predict disruption survival

• Automation hesitation creates "purgatory projects" per Dematic warnings where companies study endless scenarios while competitors implement AGV and AMR systems